Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Reopening Old Wounds…

On the evening of Saturday 17 January 1981, Yvonne Ruddock was celebrating her 16th birthday among friends and family. Gerry Francis, a friend, was pumping out a menu of reggae music – Bob Marley and the Wailers, Big Youth, Dennis Brown.

Suddenly an explosion rent the party asunder. Blazing flames transformed dance into blood and hellfire. At the end of this holocaust there were nine dead. By 9 February four more had died.

It’s a shame the ‘Guardian’ didn’t heed all that stuff about ‘inflamed rhetoric’ they were writing last week about the Tea Party, because what follows from Howe is, well, pure agitation…

That was exactly 30 years ago and my heart still sinks in despair at the New Cross fire. With all the forensic facilities at Scotland Yard's disposal, in spite of eyewitnesses who saw a white man who pulled up at the house in an Austin Princess and slung a Molotov cocktail into the party, despite the milk bottle with a fitted wick found at the base of the window sill, the authorities have still been unable to tell us the cause(s) of the fire.

That would be the ‘forensic facilities’ that one of your fellow race-mongers decries in an article in, well, the ‘Guardian’:

The recording artist and poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is one of the founding members of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. Twenty years on he is deeply cynical about the Met's new investigation. "Over the years they've had various theories," he says. "Now they are going on about forensic science. Forensic science can say anything the police want it to say..."

There’s no pleasing some…

The bombs and the bomb theory disappeared, to be replaced by the idea that the fire resulted from a fight breaking out. At our meetings we could easily undermine this theory with the help of witnesses. The police and their handmaidens in the press could not undermine the authenticity of the people.

Which is why you and your ‘people’ managed to overturn the inquest and get ‘A white boy did it and ran away!’ recorded as a verdict, eh?

Except, they didn’t. From that same article:

Police officers involved in the new investigation say they have completely ruled out the idea that a fight broke out at the party. They have also ruled out the idea of an attack from someone outside.

It doesn’t matter, though. At this stage, I don’t think anyone would accept the answer, unless it was the one they wanted to hear…

Today, though, little has changed. Black people are still seven times more likely than white people to be targeted by police. Under section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, parliament granted police the power to stop and search black and Asian people willy-nilly until the European court of human rights last year declared the practice illegal.

I have spoken to youths aplenty, and welling up within them is the inevitable thirst for violent retaliation. Perhaps the quote from Bongo Jerry, a Jamaican dub poet, expresses the sentiment best: "Sooner or later but must the dam going to bust/and every man will break out/What force can stop this river of man/who already knows its course."

Sound familiar?

Over Deptford a racist stench continues to pollute the air. The educational institution built in memory of Stephen Lawrence was desecrated with racist graffiti most foul.

The comments are well worth reading; Darcus gets a hammering on all fronts, and even the mods can't help too much. Cath Elliot beclowns herself by demanding answers, right now!, and insisting thst the state keep on holding inquests until the right result is achieved, and Michael Rosen raises a spirited defence by proclaiming institutional racism endemic to white society is at the bottom of it all, before his third-rate-sociology-lecturer argument is filleted with exquisite precision by Laban Tall.

13 comments:

What a prick that man is. There's a great quote in the comments though, from a MDH64:

"Dear old Darcus. Very much a case of the Lion in Winter. But he knows his audience, and makes a reasonable living out of playing to the gallery.

I have spoken to youths aplenty, and welling up within them is the inevitable thirst for violent retaliation.

You can almost feel the frisson of excitement statements such as that will send out to an appreciative audience of middle class (white) milquetoasts.

I've lived in Brixton for 15 years, and if there's an increase in black-on-white violence in the area, I'd imagine that one of the first groups to suffer will be the large gay population that have taken up residence in that time.

You know, The Guardian is really just The Daily Mail for biens pensants.

That last line is a cracker and something I've said for quite a while now, love it.

What a load of tosh,who the fuck does this professional moaner Darkus think he is anyhow, giving us black folks a bad rep....TWAT....I fucking hate poetry,and poets, and rap, and rappers....I like reggae though!

Poor old Darcus. He really is the only racist left in the village, isn't he? Because he very definately is, I've met him. Whitey is to blame for everything.

He's just getting peeved these days because his cause celebre is on the wane, and the newer Muslim immigrants a getting all the attention.

As usual, he can't even get his facts straight. The first riot to happen, happened in St Pauls Bristol in the Spring of 1980. Nothing to do with his fuckin agitation and "Million Man" march.

He turned up down here for the trial, hoping to waft his wisdom around, and was basically told to fuck off by the local Rastas. I was an executive in the Crown Court at the time.

All 15 of the accused were aquitted, as well they should have been. So much for Whitey oppression eh?

Oh and Darcus you utter cunt! you have 7 kids by 4 different women and pissed off into the sunset the moment each was born.Do you think that traditional Male Afro Caribbean parenting skills might have something to do with the way da Youth are turning out?

Thanks for the words of support there. And if that is you in the pic, let me say you are a stunning looking woman madam, and I think we both know the unspoken truth of the matter, don't we? Afro Caribbean males are crap at long term relationships and commitment.

I have no idea why that should be, but I can only speak as I find.

I have six Afro Caribbean female friends, all but one single mothers. The black fathers long gone. The one happily married is married to a white guy, and the other five now have white partners who have stuck around and love the kids to bits even though they are not their own. Why?

Trevor Phillips and his Racial Equality crew would prefer me not to mention these things, and would dismiss it as anecdotal if he saw this comment, but six nil is six nil in anyones book isn't it?

Under section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, parliament granted police the power to stop and search black and Asian people willy-nilly...

Just had a flash back to the 1980s where the usual suspects put out leaflets which featured a picture of a Police Officer saying 'If you are are black, Asian, Irish or gay I can arrest you under the Police Bill and detain you without charge for 24 hrs.Missing from the leaflet was any suggestion that the black, Asian Irish or gay man needed to be suspected of a criminal offence before any of that happened, so plus ca change. The Police Bill by the way was the Police and Criminal Evidence Act which actually provided more suspect rights than the old Judge's Rules did.